Housing may alter visitation hours

The Residence Hall Association (RHA) is considering several proposals for changing the visitation hours at the GC&SU residence halls.

Amanda Gunter, co-advisor of the RHA and residence hall director of Napier Hall, said that these changes were under consideration as the result of a survey taken last year, in which students expressed their desire to extend the visitation hours.

“We did really well in the survey,” Gunter said. “Students felt like this was a good environment and that they had a place to study here. One thing that we saw was that a lot of students were in favor of changing the visitation hours. Because that was seen in the survey, RHA was charged with finding out this year what the students might be interested in, if that was a realistic thing, and if that’s something we should do.”

According to current residence hall rules, students must have visitors of the opposite gender out of their room at midnight every night from Sunday through Thursday. On Friday and Saturday nights, visitors are allowed to stay for as long as they wish.

At the most recent RHA meetings, the students in attendance discussed acceptable ways to change the visitation hours. Three different plans are under consideration.

The first plan would extend the 24-hour visitation policy to Thursday night, in addition to the normal hours. The second plan would give both Thursday and Sunday 24-hour visitation privileges. The third plan would allow for 24-hour visitation every day of the week, but would require a signed form of roommate consent.

“We really want students to understand what the possible impacts would be, because the policy is in place for a reason,” Gunter said. “A lot of our residents are freshmen, and it’s hard for a freshman to confront their roommate and say, ‘Your boyfriend/girlfriend needs to leave, because I need to study or I need to sleep.’ So having midnight as a rule allows them to say, ‘Look, I don’t want to get in trouble because your boyfriend/girlfriend is here; they need to leave.’

Part of it is also helping students develop good study habits/good sleep patterns because this is probably, for most of the freshmen, their first time away from home.”

Another survey will be given to all the students living in residence halls later this semester. The survey will list the different visitation policy options, along with the pros and cons of each. Any student who wishes to do so can submit their vote to the RHA using this survey.

The pros and cons for the survey will be discussed at the next RHA meeting, which will be held on Wednesday.

Some students agree with some of the proposed changes, but think there should still be limits. Freshman Lance Logan, a resident of Parkhurst Hall, said,

“I like the Thursday and Sunday changes, but I think all the time is a little bit excessive. It would be a lot noisier and rowdier if it was 24 hours a day.”

Senior Chris Cowan, an RA in Parkhurst Hall, thinks the changes are unnecessary.

“I’m fine with the policy as it is,” Cowan said. “As a housing official, I support the current policy.”

A plan to extend the visitation hours to 2 a.m. every day of the week was discarded at an early stage, because it would place extra strain on the resident assistants on duty.

“The RAs have to walk their floors at 6:00, 8:00, 10:00, and midnight,” Gunter said. “A lot of RAs have 8 a.m. classes, so if they had to walk rounds at 2 a.m. every day, they probably wouldn’t be getting enough sleep.”

The RHA meets on the first and third Wednesdays of every month in the multipurpose room in Napier Hall. The next meeting is set for September 28 at 8:30 p.m.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 23 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry